Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. -- Charles Eisentein
What is Community Resilience?
The global pandemic has brought issues of resilience to the fore, compelling municipal leaders to consider what it means for their communities. The conversations began with the scrutiny of weaknesses in our grocery distribution systems, as some shoppers fearfully hoarded supplies while others reached out to vulnerable populations. They intensified in learning that our N95 masks are made abroad and largely unavailable to US citizens. And they continue to fortify in the face of Federal inaction. Robust community resilience strategy must take into account local mutual support networks, freedom from external dependencies and long lasting environmental sustainability planning.
Many Municipalities find themselves overwhelmed by the challenge of identifying and looking after their elderly and vulnerable residents. In response, concerned citizens are setting up systems to connect the young and healthy with those in need of food and pharmaceutical deliveries. Similarly, families across the nation are baking sourdough bread and planting Victory Gardens to ensure a reliable supply of vegetables, as crafty volunteers sew homemade masks.
Joule Community Power helps municipalities to become sustainable and resilient through low-cost renewable energy and local energy choice. Joule partners with municipalities to engage residents in community solar programs that both save subscribers money on electricity and give back to the community through a fund that is generated per enrollment. While historically our community solar funds have gone to local sustainability programming, we are now donating funds towards local COVID-19 relief efforts in participating municipalities. To learn more about Joule’s Community Solar COVID-19 Relief program, contact info@joulecommunitypower.com.
Local Interdependence: Citizen COVID-19 Responses
We believe that increasing resiliency means building and deepening relationships and developing creative solutions to strengthen communities in times of change and uncertainty. --New America
Communities across the USA are demonstrating incredible resilience through pop-up COVID-19 mutual aid hubs organized by volunteers, including in Joule partner municipalities Beacon and Red Hook. In some villages, the “Snow Angels” who usually shovel driveways for the elderly have shifted to grocery shopping. Other villages have adopted buddy systems between the young and the elderly, ensuring needs are met and offering some social interaction, albeit through closed doors. Everywhere there are tales of individuals setting up informal systems through Facebook and Google forms and crowdsourcing local donations of food and money.
Los Angeles Westside Friends has developed extensive resources online to match volunteers with requests from local neighborhood associations, using a block captain model. They are further offering to copy their website backend, forms, flyers and best practices for any municipality in need. Directions for how to access and copy their resources can be found here. The Hudson Valley Mutual Aid Network is written in three languages and offers extensive helpful materials including a guide to setting up neighborhood pods.
Resilience is developing through regional and inter-village pandemic responses as well. The Westchester Village of Irvington is sharing services with the neighboring village Dobbs Ferry to provide childcare to frontline workers, and with the neighboring village of Elmsford to coordinate free lunches for school families.
Numerous technology platforms and national and global efforts offer local solutions. For example, C40 Cities, a climate leadership group that is driving urban action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has now developed a COVID-19 resources hub for cities. Nextdoor, a community hub platform, has partnered with public agencies such as local police, fire and emergency management in many municipalities. By mobilizing survivors, “Survival Corps works to bring support to communities, keep essential businesses operating, help get people back to work, and foster a spirit of togetherness that is urgently needed to weather this crisis longer-term.” And Make Masks connects volunteer mask sewers to those looking for coverage across the nation.
In NYC, Invisible Hands organizes twenty-somethings to deliver groceries and essentials to the eldery and vulnerable and encourages them to stop and chat from a socially safe distance. North Brooklyn is operating its Mutual Aid on a spreadsheet with their soup kitchen on GoFundMe, while the East Bay is on Facebook.
Joule is currently working with Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley to facilitate fund distribution to community relief efforts. Some municipalities have a strong need to support their Volunteer Ambulance Corps whose revenue is down, since regular insurance-paid hospital visits have all but stopped, and yet who have to buy new protective equipment. Others need support for their overtaxed Senior Centers or have partnerships with organizations like Meals on Wheels, local United Way, Feeding American chapters or food pantries, who are most in need.
Joule is thrilled to be supporting community COVID19 relief efforts in whatever form makes the most sense for participating municipalities.
Global Independence: Supporting Local Ecosystems
We believe that economic systems should embody democratic values, and that democracy can thrive only when economic power is widely dispersed. We believe that communities are healthiest when they possess the authority, capacity, and responsibility to chart their own course. We call this vision local self-reliance. -- Institute for Local Self-Reliance
The excellent strengthening of local interdependence occurring now bodes well for communities wishing to decrease external dependencies. COVID-19 has exposed our shortage of hospital beds, which is a result of hospital consolidation. “Mergers and closures have contributed to the reduction in hospital beds in the United States, from around 1.5 million in 1975 to just more than 900,000 in 2017” according to the Washington Post.
In an effort to decrease external dependencies and build cultural self-determination and resilience, Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Town Movement, encourages communities to produce their own goods and services, curb the need for transportation and introduce local currencies that ensure dollars stay local.
Many municipalities have posted listings of the businesses that are open and able to deliver ‘essential’ services to their communities. Residents are making a point to order from those local establishments to keep them in business and, some of those who can afford to, continue to pay nannies and other service providers who would otherwise struggle to survive.
Municipalities enrolling in Joule’s community solar program are able to return energy dollars to residents through an approximate 10% subscriber discount on their annual electricity expenses, generate new funds for the community through the COVID-19 relief offer and decrease dependence on fossil fuels.
Sustainability: Developing for Perpetuity
Resilience is an opportunity and a step forward, rather than purely a disaster avoidance strategy. --Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Town movement
Resilience and environmental sustainability measures are often inextricably intertwined. A new nationwide study shows that those exposed to high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from COVID-19.
In New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate Smart Communities program offers points towards accreditation for creating a Climate Resilience Vision. Municipal resilience plans often feature climate adaptation solutions to anticipated shocks and hazards such as waterfront wetlands for sea level rise. After Hurricane Superstorm Sandy, NYC introduced the lexicon of resilience into sustainability efforts with a focus on rebuilding and engineering, including a Waterfront Plan as part of its Vision 2020 Climate Resilience Goals. Kingston also created a Waterfront Flooding Task Force Report for Climate Smart Community points. The Town of Geneva, in the Finger Lakes, raised $25,000 through Joule’s own sustainability fund and are dedicating it to stormwater control for watershed protection.
Municipal resiliency plans may support local biodiversity to ensure ecosystems are less susceptible to failure with increased exposure to virulent invasive species. Indeed, it is the very act of disturbing the world’s last natural habitats and wild creatures that has brought us AIDs, SARS, EBOLA and CORONA. Bee keeping is increasingly necessary to ensure crop pollination and tree planting may be implemented to protect vulnerable urban populations during heat waves.
The resilience of local cultural and financial ecosystems must also be considered for a just transition. Municipalities may focus on building infrastructure, such as solar arrays, with local companies and so create green jobs. And investments in building energy efficiency upgrades create new, largely local, and non-transferable jobs. In Europe, 19 jobs are created by every 1 million euros of investment.
A silver lining of the COVID-19 global shut down is substantially clearer skies over China, Italy, and India, where people can see the Himalayas for the first time and levels of both PM2.5 and the harmful gas nitrogen dioxide have fallen more than 70 percent. Municipalities enrolling in Joule’s community solar program are able to reduce New York’s fossil fuel consumption, and related carbon emissions, in perpetuity by supporting local renewable energy generation.
Conclusion
A corona is a crown. “Novel coronavirus pandemic” means “a new coronation for all.”
Now is our greatest chance in a lifetime to course-correct from a single-bottom-line race to resource depletion, ecosystem collapse, and inequities beyond repair. Fortunately, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief, the world is on track for the largest drop in carbon emissions ever seen due to the reduction in air and car traffic, and industrial activity. But the pandemic will not correct climate change.
Now is the time to build long-lasting and flexible solutions, more secure against global instabilities. As millions of companies fold around the world and remote working and distance learning accelerate our complete transition to digital, it is safe to say that things will never look the same again. We look forward to helping communities meet the opportunity in this transition.
Charlotte E Binns
About Joule Community Power
Joule Community Power works with municipalities and community activists to achieve sustainable energy goals while reducing costs for residents and small businesses. Joule's expertise in designing and implementing consumer-protective power supply contracts was instrumental in the creation of New York State’s first community choice aggregation (or “CCA”), an energy program enabling municipalities to leverage the aggregate buying power of their residents to better negotiate the price and source of their electricity. The pilot program, Westchester Power, saved residents more than $17M in the first contract. The 2016 contract, drafted by Joule, was the largest purchase of renewable energy in New York state history at the time, on behalf of more than 100,000 homes. Joule is currently the only CCA Administrator sourcing 100% renewable energy default supply for all programs.
Joule’s innovative renewable energy strategy is encouraging New York State to rapidly evolve community energy policies. Joule offers the only CCA program with a Public Service Commission-approved implementation plan integrating community solar projects. This plan offers an unprecedented opportunity for previously excluded consumers to access renewable energy savings and for communities to stimulate local economies.
To learn more, visit www.joulecommunitypower.com. Joule Community Power is a division of Joule Assets.